“They kissed long enough for Carter to feel all the tender possibilities of contact: kissing! touching! feeling! and then, with a flood of happiness, he realized he was kissing Annabelle Bernhardt, and she was exactly the right person to kiss.”-- Glen David Gold, ‘Carter Beats The Devil’

==

Brody offers to close shop for the day – almost everyone in town will be at the wedding. He looks at her knowingly. “It’s Matt. You never know what to expect.”

She takes the shift anyway.

“Nothing better to do at home,” she says.

==

A few hours in, Matt enters quietly, comes straight to the bar and waits.

She doesn’t need to ask what happened – it’s in his expression, the empty ring finger, the way he keeps rubbing a hand over his face. She puts a shot of whiskey and a beer in front of him, goes to the back for the special occasion stuff Brody keeps locked up.

He’s working on the beer when she gets back, eyes the bottle in her hand.

“I didn’t think the regular stuff would cut it,” she explains, and pours them both a shot.

He nods, clinks her glass with his. “Here’s to doing the right thing.”

==

“Can you drive?” he asks.

She nods, and he drops his keys into her palm, his hand resting over hers for a long moment.

She looks down at the keys. “Your dad’s car?”

“I’ll explain it to him later.” He gives a shrug of a shoulder.

She tidies up the bar, locks the cash drawer as he watches from the back door. He reaches for her hand as they walk to the car, and she knows why she doesn’t stop him.

It dawns on her suddenly that she should leave a note for Brody. Inside, she finds a pen and a napkin, scribbles down a quick message: One day I’ll figure out how you guess these things.

==

She knows better than to drive anywhere familiar, so she heads west on the interstate, chases the sun.

“Did you tell her?” she asks.

“Yeah. I couldn’t just leave her like that.” He fiddles with the vents on the front dash. “I said it was a mistake.”

He stops her somewhere close to midnight and they find a semi-decent looking motel a couple of miles from the exit. Inside, Matt asks for one room, and she doesn’t miss the guy behind the counter as he notes the lack of rings, of bags.

“It’s not what you think,” she says, but there’s guilt.

The guy is nonplussed. “We all have secrets.”

“Good ones?” Matt asks.

==

The room is small but clean, and she sits on the bed, tired and not really caring about anything more than a night’s sleep.

“It’s going to be okay, right?” Matt looks a bit lost, the day finally catching up to him, and he takes a seat beside her. She’s not sure if he’s asking about the room, about them, about his failed attempt at marriage, or some combination of the three, so she simply nods.

You know, it's sad that now the show is cancelled, I'm finding it easier to write Scott/James. SIGH. At least it's likely to end on a question mark and I can imagine endless futures in fic for them. ;)